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REPORT. 



Tlie Committee appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the 

 Treasury 



" To consider the present arrangements under which botanical work 

 is done and collections maintained by the Trustees of the British 

 Museum and under the First (_*ommissioner of Works at Kew, 

 respectively ; and to report what changes (if any) in those 

 arrangements are necessary or desirable in order to avoid 

 duplication of work and collections at the two institutions," 



having met on fourteen occasions, examined eighteen witnesses, and taken 

 into consideration several documents, including those drawn up for their use 

 by the Secretary, bearing upon the sulijects referred to them by Their Lord- 

 -ships, beg leave to report as follows : — 



The Botanical Department of the British Museum, and the Royal Preliminary 

 Botanic Gardens, Kew, are, in their primary intention, institutions of widely observations. 

 -different characters. 



The Botanical Department of the British Museum is a collection of such 

 ■objects belonging to the vegetable kingdom as can be placed in a museum, 

 and its functions are limited to the uses of such a collection for the ad- 

 vancement of botanic science and for the purposes of giving popular 

 instruction and of exciting popular interest in natural history. It does 

 not concern itself with the applications of botany, either at home or 

 ■elsewhere. 



The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, is, in the first place, an organisation 

 dealing with and giving assistance to His Majesty's Government on 

 questions arising in various parts of the Empire in which botanic science 

 is involved. So far it has a distinctly Imperial character. It is at the same 

 time an institution for the prosecution of theoretical botanic research, 

 i.e., of botanic research carried on independent of practical ends, it is a 

 school for advanced horticultural education, it acts as the botanic adviser of 

 the Government on agricultural questions, and as a public garden it affords 

 general instruction and recreation to the people. 



The British Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, possess 

 each of them a herbarium or collection of dried plants, together with certain 

 botanic specimens, fruits, woody parts, etc., which cannot be "laid in " in a 

 herbarium as ordinarily understood. For the present purposes, however, in 

 speaking of the herbarium, we may suppose such objects to be included. 

 These herbaria, with the libraries attached to them, are, so far as pertains to 

 the present inquiry, the only collections of a similar character belonging to 

 the two institutions. 



The two herbaria having features in common, have nevertheless each 

 special features. 



The differences are in part due to the way in which each collection 

 has grown up, as will l)e seen from the following brief historical statement : — 



Certain liotanic collections formed part of the British Museum at its History of 

 institution in 1753. These were the collections of Sir Hans Sloane, consisting British .Afuseum 

 of driad plants, the Sloane herlmria, often spoken of in this report as the collections. 

 pre-Linnean Herbaria, and of woods, fruits, etc. No very large additions 

 seem to have been made to these collections l^etween 1753 and 1820. 



The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, begun in the middle of the 



